Thursday, September 30, 2010

There's just something about a Roy Krenkel drawing that grabs my imagination and just won't let go. There are so many Krenkel drawings out there, waiting to be discovered, that it's like a treasure hunt to gather them together.

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Carl Larsson was a Swedish painter, an important watercolorist working at the turn of the twentieth century.

Carl Larsson — Model Writing a Picture Postcard — 1906

This is what Larsson wrote in the 1911 magazine Kunst:

". . . it would be enough reward if only men, through my art, understood how beautiful a flower on the side of a path is; how charming are the plaits around a young girl's small round neck, and the touch of the sun on a little nose; how splendid the nude figure of a woman is . . . but one must produce these images in the best possible way, with joy and enthusiasm, with hard work and pain, and the final result must be a victory, not giving the impression of confusion or fatigue, but illuminating the onlooker in a liberating way . . . Following this way of life, painters executed study after study, without being pleased or satisfied with their work, striving to reach that perfection which always seemed further away with each work that they were painting."

Carl Larsson — Girl Crouching — 1911

This drawing is a bit surprising, for the times, with a naturalistic style and the seemingly spontaneous smile—rather like a modern photo you might see on Tumblr or such.

It's fun to look back to days of future past, to see what yesterday thought the today of their tomorrow would look like.

These couple of pages are from the yesterday of 1946, created by Jack Kirby and Joe Simon, showing, among other things, that everyone will own a set of portable jets to 'soar leisurely aloft at medium speeds'. I haven't been issued my set yet, so that probably won't be until the day after tomorrow, or maybe the tomorrow of the next month of the future. Though, this first page does hint at the achievement of Fed-Ex, getting fruits from farms to the desert within hours of being plucked.

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Mark Trail was created in 1946 by Ed Dodd, as an adventure strip, but by the time I was collecting it, it had become an encyclopedia of nature factoids. Not very exciting, but the graphics were colorful and compelling. I've saved a lot of them, even to this day.

Monday, September 27, 2010

In the early 20th century era of amazing magazine illustrations, this Vogue cover stands out. It's typical art nouveau subject matter of the time, but the treatment is sensitive and gorgeous. It's signed by St. John, and I can't help but figure that this is J. Allen St. John, by any means not typical of him, and likewise his signature.

This was the point in time when J(ames) Allen St. John was turning out mainstream assignments for magazines and advertisers, though four years prior to this cover he had illustrated the book The Face in the Pool, and it would be two years after this cover that Edgar Rice Burroughs would write his first story Dejah Thoris, Princess of Mars. I could settle this in my mind if I had access to the St. John bibliography, but I don't. Probably one of you St. John enthusiasts do (Mr. DoorTree?).

Later note: We've heard from Mr. DoorTree, and yes indeed, this cover was created by our esteemed ERBdom chronicler, J. Allen St. John. So sweet, so sweet.

This blog jumps around just as much as my pictorial interests do. Sometimes I get dizzy leaping and twirling between all the arts.

I get a kick out of early Disney cartoon short posters, and I like the Donald Duck posters a fair amount more than I like the cartoons themselves (just as I like the Warner Bros cartoons a whole bunch better than their posters).

Saturday, September 25, 2010

I believe that originally this illustration by Florence Harrison was from Elfin Song, published in 1912, but here was printed in L'Illustration, the amazing French periodical published from 1843 to 1944.

Friday, September 24, 2010

In 1932, Alec Shanks designed this program cover for the Folies Bergère, one of Paris' most legendary cabarets, in a very Erté like style, elegant and larger than life—which of course is what the Follies were.

Monday, September 20, 2010

The fine art of fantasy illustration is alive and well in a large number of artists sharing our current realm. Among the masters is Alan Lee, known to most for his Tolkien related wonder works. But here, this beautiful plate from the 1988 Merlin Dreams by Peter Dickinson.

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About Me

My name is Thom Buchanan.
I'm an artist and photographer.
People are my favorite subjects to portray in art and photos. My wife (and studio partner) has called that my 'people skills', as I've been passionately creating portrait studies for many years.
I refer to myself as a pictorialist, a combination of image-making and journalist. Images are my life.